Our office gets several weekly newsletters, one of which has a report about the reading habits of the general public.
- Make everything easy — easy to read, easy to navigate.... Easy, easy, easy. People searching a web site tend to be "brutally efficient." As soon as they run into a speed bump, they're off to somewhere else. For them, even little speed bumps become roadblocks.
- Dark colors on a white background are most popular, and if you really want to be sure that you reach all the population, use black on white to reach those who are color blind.
- DON'T USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS FOR SENTENCES, ESPECIALLY REALLY LONG SENTENCES LIKE THIS ONE WILL BE AS SOON AS I CAN FIGURE OUT WHAT MORE TO SAY TO MAKE IT A REALLY LONG SENTENCE.
Throughout history, ALL CAPS has been reserved for headlines and short advertising copy.
On the Internet, using ALL CAPS is the same as yelling. DO YOU REALLY NEED TO YELL AT YOUR READERS?
Use bold, italics, underlining, and bigger fonts to make your statement, and if you can't come up with a title that says anything, YELLING IT ISN'T GOING TO MAKE IT BETTER.
The other thing about ALL CAPS is that it is difficult to read, i.e., NOT EASY! The human eye and brain have been taught to read words and sentences. This is the basis behind speed reading, so when you force your readers to slow down to try to read words which their eyes and mind are not familiar, you tire them out and make them leave. - It's natural to try to make your site look exciting because you want to be seen as exciting, but again this year, tests indicate that boring — i.e., easy to read — is what people actually want on a website.
- Use larger fonts for your older prospects. Many computers and software now let you change the size of your screen, but then your readers start having to scroll left to right and up and down. You lose them.
You don't have to put everything on your home page. A well-organized home page with links to other well-organized pages just one click deep is more effective than the home page that takes five minutes to scroll to the bottom.
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